Forbes:

Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050

Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.

Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School).

Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year. That’s 14,826,322 acres, or just less than the entire state of West Virginia (see the 2010 assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN).

Even in the U.S., 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. For children under the age of 18, that number increases to 20% (see U.S. Census).

12 Futuristic Forms of Government -- Which one would you prefer?

As history has repeatedly shown, political systems come and go. Given our rapid technological and social advances, it's a trend we can expect to continue. Here are 12 extraordinary  and even frightening &#151; ways our governments could be run in the future.

1. Noocracy

Similar to Plato's "government of the wise," a noocracy would be, in the words of "biosphere" popularizer Vladimir Vernadsky, "a social and political system based on the priority of the human mind." [...]

2. Cyberocracy

In a cyberocracy, governments, or governmental institutions, would rule by the effective use of information. [...]

3. An AI Singleton

But once an artificial intelligence becomes sophisticated and powerful enough, it could set itself up as a Singleton &#151; a hypothetical world order in which there is a single decision-making agency (or entity) at the highest level of control. [...]

4. Democratic World Government

We may very well be on our way to achieving the Star Trek-like vision of a global-scale liberal democracy &#151; one capable of ending nuclear proliferation, ensuring global security, intervening to end genocide, defending human rights, and putting a stop to human-caused climate change. [...]

5. The Polystate

But if one overarching global system is not to your liking, you can always go non-local. [...]

6. Futarchy

[...] "Market speculators would set prices that estimate national welfare conditional on adopting proposed policies. When the market estimate of welfare conditional on adopting a policy is higher than the estimate conditional on non-adoption, that proposal becomes law."

7. Delegative Democracy

Also known as liquid democracy, it's described by Bryan Ford as a new paradigm for democratic organization where individual vote transfers, or delegation, is emphasized over mass election. In such a system, voting power is vested in delegates rather than representatives. [...]

8. Seasteading

For those of you looking to escape into international waters, there's always seasteading to consider &#151; modular, autonomous, voluntary city-states. They could take on the form of abandoned ocean liners or anything else that floats. [...]

9. Gerontocracy

As people live increasingly longer, and as we gradually phase into the era of radical life extension, there's the distinct possibility that the aged will hold on to their wealth and power. [...]

10. Demarchy

Coined by Australian philosopher John Burnheim, a demarchy, or lottocracy, is a form of government in which the state is governed by randomly selected decision makers who have been selected from a pool of eligible citizens. [...]

11. A Dark Enlightenment

If a band of wingnut anarcho-capitalists get their way, we'll take one step forward by overthrowing liberal democracy &#151; and then take two steps back by re-instating a monarchist or authoritarian system. The ringleader of this neoreactionary movement, or dark enlightenment as its called, is Mencius Moldbug. [...]

12. Post-Apocalyptic Hunter-Gatherers

Speaking of regression, there's also the possibility that some kind of catastrophic event will force us to revert to paleolithic politics. [...]

Trickle down working!: Richest 1% Will Have More Wealth Than Remaining 99% By 2016: Oxfam Study

The richest one percent of the world’s population will have more wealth than the remaining 99 percent by next year, charity group Oxfam said, in a report published Monday. The report, which warns of a widening gap between the world’s richest and the rest, comes ahead of this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

The Mechanics Of A Free Society

(Not the one we are living in.)

"Most people who have given any consideration to a moneyless, 'free world' society are already aware that we have the technology today to create a world of abundance without the constraints and inequality of the traditional market system, owing to how much human labour can now be efficiently automated.

[..]

In my opinion, this kind of super-advanced “Star Trek” moneyless society is still quite a distance away – not because we lack the technology – but because we humans lack the openness and understanding required to make it work."

People have been captured by the 1%

“Just like the political parties, we have been captured by the 1%. We cannot imagine a different world, a different economic system, a different media landscape, because our intellectual horizons have been so totally restricted by the media conglomerates that control our newspapers, our TV and radio stations, the films we watch, the video games we play, the music we listen to. We are so imaginatively confined we cannot even see the narrow walls within which our minds are allowed to wander.”

As the disruptive capacities of technological innovations continue to advance at an exponential rate, it is increasingly clear that the capitalist economic model is unable to effectively manage resources and distribute wealth under the conditions of sustainable abundance now being brought forth. Vast increases in productivity and efficiency will be realized in the years ahead through an integrated network of smart-products (termed the Internet of Things, or IoT), accessible renewable energy harvesting technologies, energy sharing across a distributed smart-grid, the decentralization of manufacturing through 3D printing, open online education, the decentralization of finance, legal contracts and governance through Blockchain applications, and the progressive automation of the workforce.

Just as John Maynard Keynes prophesized nearly a century ago, “a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [economic]needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.” [1]Keynes foresaw such an economic state of abundance coming about through, what he first termed, technological unemployment which, he stated, “ [we]will hear a great deal in the years to come;” the ultimate implication being “that mankind is solving its economic problem.” [2]Keynes looked expectantly to a future in which machines had progressed to the point of providing an abundance of freely available goods and services to humanity — liberating people around the world from menial labor, debt and servitude for the first time.

Ironically, the operating principles of the capitalist marketplace are bringing us ever closer to this very state, while simultaneously the relevance of the competitive market is progressively undermined by the same emerging paradigm. Capitalist logic dictates that the entrepreneurial spirit of a competitive market will continually drive productivity increases and marginal cost decreases. Marginal cost — the cost of producing additional units of product — is the focus, as this is where entrepreneurs and businesses make their profits in a market-exchange economy (at the margin); and when marginal cost approaches zero, so too does profit. The effects of near zero marginal cost can already be seen wreaking havoc across several media industries such as entertainment, communications and publishing, as more and more content continues to be shared and made freely available across digital, collaborative networks.